Tag: Sensory Acuity

One of the best tools to develop is the ability to take in a bigger chunk of data at once, and to be able to interpret this naturally. I wrote this a while ago, and I figured I’d share it with you.

There’s this thing in the brain called the corpus callosum — it’s what connects both sides of the brain. The thing is, in females, that massive information channel is about twice as big as it is in males. This is the part of the brain that all the data goes through, and it’s why a lot of guys tend to be very left-brained.

I trained myself to be able to access both sides of the brain, back when I didn’t even know I was doing it. Part of it was through becoming more aware of what was happening around me. I don’t know if you guys are aware of this, but what you are sensing right now is only a fraction of what you could be sensing. If you don’t believe me, go into a war zone. After a few days of being shot at, you’ll go into what’s called hyper acuity — which is what you do if you don’t want to die.

Another example is Milton Erickson, a very famous hypnotist who is dead now, had childhood polio. One of the side effects was that he was initially deaf — and he trained himself to figure out how a person’s voice sounded by looking at their throat.

A female’s voice tends to originate higher in the throat, whereas a male’s voice tends to originate lower. Some people speak out of their throat, so that vibrates, some people speak from the upper chest, some from the diaphragm, and some deeper down. This is actually surprisingly easy to see if you actually pay attention to how people breathe.

I talk to people about “energy”. To me this is a pretty straightforward concept, it’s something I can feel. Besides, if you know anything about how the universe works, the basic building block is energy. Somehow people have a hard time making the leap from the scientific understanding that they got with their left brain to being able to feel this energy, to project it, and to manipulate it.

So one way of increasing sensory acuity is to notice the energy in your body. How does it flow? Where does it start, and then where, and where does it end up? Where are you breathing at right now? How would a person who is happy or totally certain of an outcome be breathing? How would they be standing?

Talking about senses, most people think of the 5 senses — or VAKOG. Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Olfactory, and Gustatory. In NLP these are called representational systems or modalities. The primary ones are visual, auditory and kinesthetic. So, when someone puts their eyes up, they are accessing visually. If they put their eyes to the side they are accessing auditorally, if they go down and to the left that’s where they are talking to themselves (also auditory), and down and to the right is kinesthetic.

If you want to increase your auditory acuity, grab two friends… have them sit pretty close together, close your eyes, and have them snap their fingers in the same location and you tell them which one did the finger snap. You should get between about 30-70% of them correctly to be learning the skill efficiently.

If you want to increase visual acuity, look down at the grass. Did you know that every blade of grass is a different shade of green? It’s true. If you don’t see it yet, look closer and see what distinctions you can make. These distinctions from NLP are called submodalities… There’s a fairly good list here (although I’ve seen much more complete ones): http://www.trans4mind.com/personal_development/mindMastery/submodalities.htm

If you want to increase kinesthetic acuity, pay attention to your body. Put your eyes down and to the right and scan your body — what muscles are the most tense? What muscles are the most relaxed? Can you feel the weight of your body sinking down into the chair? The air on your skin? The feel of the clothes on your body? The blood moving through your left earlobe? 🙂

I could write 20 pages about this topic, but if you wanted to increase your sensory acuity you now have a good start.

Take care

Hypnosis

Why more sensory acuity?

To increase your sensory acuity is to increase the number of distinctions that you can make with your senses. It also increases the amount of data that you are able to consciously focus on. As you begin to pay attention to social dynamics, you’ll discover that your ability to read people and what is going on in the situation is dramatically increased. And at this point in the journey you can start to acquire social skills at a much deeper level.

How do you do it?

Paying attention is sometimes a hard thing for people to do. They spend too much time being inwardly focused and they aren’t that aware of what is going on in the outside world.

Step 1

The first step is to reverse that pattern. Spend time being externally focused. You have to know the difference between what is inside of your head and what is the external world. That sounds easy but trust me most people do not know the difference.

To practice this, take out an object, say a deck of cards. Focus completely on the deck of cards so completely that you memorize it, and notice how that feels. Then when you’re still looking at the deck of cards, start to talk to yourself inside of your own head and think about that while you look at the deck. Notice how that is different.

Once you know what is inside of your head and what is the external world, you need to remain cognizant of that at all times. Know when you are drifting into dream land and know when you are fully wide awake. How much of your time driving is spent completely focused on the outer road? If you think about it, it’s probably not much.

Step 2

Practice hyperacuity. [tag]Hyperacuity[/tag] means that all of your senses are switched ON. Before I mentioned it, were you completely aware of all of your physical sensations? If you begin to focus on your body right now, how does that differ from what you were feeling before?

And while you’re focusing on the body, how much of the world are you taking in with your eyes? How many of the sounds around you can you track, and can you feel the general vibe of the room you are in.

The goal is to track all of those at once. You want to overwhelm your auditory.

Auditory channels move much slower than visual channels, and there is no way the audio inside of your head will ever keep up with the pictures. My personal belief is that one of the first steps in a change process is to significantly reduce or get rid of the self-talk.

So here is an exercise. Go out to somewhere where there’s a lot of activity, preferrably involving people talking. See how many of the voices you can track simultaneously. Allow your brain to become overwhelmed.

By letting go you will allow yourself to take in the extra data. People who try to remain in control at all times are expending tons of energy to try to control the data flow. Just like it’s hard to put a needle in a vein when somebody is flexing their muscle, everything in the body and mind works better when there is relaxation and acceptance present.

During this exercise keep your vision as wide (x/y axis) and as deep (z axis) as possible. See how many colors you can take in at once. Allow yourself to feel every molecule of air surrounding your skin. Notice the minute muscle movements in your body. Notice your breathing.

Basically take all of your senses as you start to perceive things much more acutely. You may become aware of a pressure.

Step 3

Amp up your [tag]intuition[/tag]. After you’ve practiced Step 2 for a while, and you’ve done it successfully, it’s time to get really easy about it and let things come to you.

This involves not blocking the intuitions. All of you would get intuitions and enlightened thoughts every moment if you weren’t constantly getting in the way of yourselves. So acceptance of the moment and letting go is a must. If you try to control the process, either through muscle tension or inside voices or ego issues, the whole thing goes kaput.

One of the things I do is I train guys on how to walk up to girls and talk to them. At first they are so frightened and pumping so much adrenaline into themselves that they can only take in a very limited amount of extra data. At that stage all of their resources are trapped. After a while though they get better and they are able to receive more data and make better decisions.

You have to give up trying to expect a response. What is the difference between expectation and anticipation? Anticipation feels very light-hearted, like there is a positive outcome there. You assume positivity. Expectation means that you are moving out into the future in order to put an outcome there that hasn’t actually happened yet.

You also have to change your beliefs regarding intuitions. If your reality is that you don’t get them, then you won’t get them. If you are open to the fact that things may turn out to be much better than you expected, then you may find that realizing itself in your life as well.

Most people have caps on just how good they can feel, or how good their life can be. They have caps on how fast it can happen, and they usually assume hard-work must be involved. Well, you could be one of those people, or you could join the more enlightened group that gets all the rewards.

Why are some people much more successful than the vast majority? I believe it’s because they allowed themselves to have it.

As has been recommended before, Eckhart Tolle’s books are good for present-focused [tag]consciousness[/tag]. Shinzen Young also has an excellent [tag]meditation[/tag] product out called “The Science of Enlightenment” – I would say it’s the best way to begin your meditation practices, bar none. And you can be in a state of meditation during hyper-acuity.

Have fun.